Nuzzleway: Pet Care Journal

Inspiration

Caring for a pet is a lifelong relationship, with needs that change over time. Pet parents need to organize everyday care, notice changes in wellbeing, keep health notes and memories, and sometimes coordinate care with someone else. We created Nuzzleway as a calm, practical companion for the whole journey. Its first-100-days adoption journey is one guided starting point within a broader experience for life with a pet.

What it does

Nuzzleway is a pet-care journal for everyday life, designed to support pets and their people across changing life stages. For a newly adopted pet, its guided first-100-days journey provides a structured beginning; routines, wellbeing check-ins, reminders and a private record support ongoing care beyond that milestone.

Pet parents can:

• Use the guided first-100-days journey as an adoption starting point, plus practical guidance tailored to their pet’s species, age, life stage, home and recent records.
• Create recurring routines for meals, walks, play, rest, grooming and other care, then record when they are completed.
• Track mood, appetite, energy and confidence, alongside activity, water and bathroom habits.
• Keep health notes, medication records, appointments, care dates and milestones together.
• Save journal entries and photos, and revisit memories and changes in the Growth Gallery.
• See personalized suggestions and weekly trends based on their pet’s profile and recent activity.
• Keep records for multiple pets, including notes about how they relate to one another.
• Export a summary to share with a veterinarian and find reward-based activities for young dogs.

Nuzzleway is designed to support people without adding pressure: there are no streaks to protect and no guilt when a day looks different. Its guidance is informational; it does not diagnose conditions or replace a veterinarian.

New in the latest 1.11 release candidate

• Shared Home: An administrator can invite one caregiver and choose which pet profiles to share. Both people can use the same app tabs and see shared history, journal entries and routines with the author of each action. Household activity notifications are optional. Shared actions recorded offline queue on the device and sync when connectivity returns. Shared Home is included in the administrator’s active Pro plan for two people total; the invited caregiver does not need a separate Pro purchase. Personal use remains available without an account.
• Ten additional app languages: The release candidate expands from English and Spanish to German, French, Italian, European Portuguese, Finnish, Dutch, Turkish, Japanese, Korean and Simplified Chinese.
• Everyday refinements: Clearer routine reminders, a more compact journal layout, improved saving for records and photos, and previews before importing a backup.

How we built it

Nuzzleway is a native SwiftUI app for iPhone and iPad. SwiftData stores personal pet records on the device by default, and Observation coordinates app state. The guided 100-day adoption journey and broader care guidance are localized editorial content; a rules-based recommendation engine combines the pet’s profile, life stage, check-ins, journal entries and completed routines to suggest relevant next steps.

Personal care works without an account and remains local-first. Shared Home is an opt-in cloud feature: both people sign in, and the administrator selects the pet profiles to share. Firebase supports household membership and syncing shared records. Local notifications handle personal reminders; optional household notifications report activity by the other member. StoreKit and RevenueCat manage Pro purchases.

We also focused on accessibility, Dynamic Type, dark mode, iPad layouts, data deletion and clear boundaries around veterinary information. The 1.11 release candidate includes twelve app languages.

Challenges we ran into

Our main challenge was making personalized pet care feel reassuring instead of clinical or judgmental. We also had to keep personal records private and useful offline while designing an optional shared-care flow that identifies who recorded each action and can recover after a connection is lost.

Other challenges included:

• Writing useful guidance for different pets and life stages without presenting it as diagnosis or treatment.
• Supporting routines, notes, check-ins, photos, reminders and multiple pets without overwhelming the everyday experience.
• Making the same native product work well across iPhone and iPad.
• Localizing the app and its care guidance across twelve languages.
• Keeping household access, subscriptions, privacy and data deletion understandable.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud to have built a cohesive native app rather than a collection of disconnected trackers. Nuzzleway brings together a guided first-100-days adoption journey and the everyday tools to continue beyond it: daily plans, care routines, wellbeing check-ins, a searchable journal, memories and photos, reminders, multi-pet profiles, veterinary summaries and personalized suggestions.

Our latest 1.11 release candidate extends that foundation with Shared Home for an administrator and one invited caregiver, offline queuing for shared care, and ten additional app languages. We are especially proud that the experience stays warm and encouraging while taking privacy and veterinary boundaries seriously.

What we learned

Pet care is more than a list of tasks. A useful record can help people notice patterns, build confidence and recognize small moments of progress. We also learned that thoughtful content and a clear data model can make guidance feel personal without requiring an AI system or sending personal records to a server by default.

Most of all, a calm product requires restraint: fewer unnecessary notifications, clear boundaries and language that supports people instead of judging them.

What's next for Nuzzleway: Pet Care Journal

Next, we plan to deepen species-specific guidance and trend views across more life stages, make recurring care schedules more flexible, improve household and veterinarian workflows, and continue developing long-term memories and optional backup and device transfer.

The long-term vision is for Nuzzleway to become a trusted, private record of life with a pet: part care companion, part memory book and part everyday source of reassurance.

Built With

• revenuecat
• swift
• swiftui